Making progress at Made-Well

Making progress at Made-Well

Made-Well is a not-for-profit community interest company, located on a farm in mid-Devon. Their service provides a range of constructive, purposeful and positive opportunities for people with both learning and physical disabilities, as well as those in poor mental health. As with all community services, resources are limited and pressure to deliver is high, so partnering with specialist organisations to offer external support provides a vital extra, especially for vulnerable adults.

Positive People’s digital specialists, Cosmic, went in with the aim of delivering two workshops around social media and online safety. As many of the participants present were active social media users, our focus had to be on training them to be self-sufficient and aware of the dangers presented by others on the different networks.

We covered a wide range of subjects, such as how to deal with trolls and scammers, how to protect their accounts from being seen publicly, and how to prevent their data being stolen. As we knew we’d be dealing with a wide range of abilities, we sought to tailor the session to give the basic understanding to all, and open the floor up to questions and individual support. It was important to us that everyone was able to leave the session feeling a lot more comfortable about going online.

Across both sessions, Positive People had several staff available to chat and demonstrate to each participant, and all of them were able to take a log-in to Learn My Way with them so they could continue training at their own pace, in their own time. Learn My Way is a government led initiative designed to build and improve basic digital skills, and its focus on interactive activities has proven to be a great help to those starting their digital journeys for the first time.

Our time at Made-Well was hugely rewarding, and for some members of the team relit a fire and reminded them why we’ve come together to do what we do. We live in hope that we can continue to change the lives’ of our participants, even if it’s just as simple as helping them write their first Facebook post.